Elaine DeVries ran for more than four hours to get to the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15. She had no idea that all that time she was running toward a bomb.

The 62-year-old Excelsior woman was about 4 hours and 9 minutes into racing her third Boston Marathon, just beyond the 26.1-mile point in the race, when she saw the first bomb explode in front of her near the finish line less than a tenth of a mile away.

"The first one sounded like a cannon," said DeVries, one of more than 500 Minnesotans registered for the famed marathon.

Then came a second blast that sounded even louder.

"All of sudden there was just pandemonium going on, screaming."

DeVries said she saw a woman on the ground with two children. She wasn't sure whether they were alive.

"There were body parts, on the side, kind of," she said. "I thought I saw like an arm.

"I saw blood, and everything was just a blur," she said. "I turned and I didn't want to look anymore."

Hundreds of runners were still on the race course.

"The police said, 'Run! Go as fast as you can the other way,' " DeVries said. "No one knew if there were more explosions going to happen.

"It was controlled chaos. Everyone was screaming and yelling," she said.

DeVries got off the course and took shelter in a restaurant for about 90 minutes before walking back to her hotel.

Natalie Bushaw, a spokeswoman with Life Time Fitness, said about 100 runners from the health club's running group participated in it, and all were accounted for.

State Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, had finished the marathon and was away from the finish line at the time of the explosions, according to his office. He was unhurt and didn't hear or see anything.

A previous leg injury prevented Monique Delong from finishing the marathon as fast as she hoped.

But while she was still in the finishing chute of the race, the St. Louis Park runner heard the two explosions at the finish line, which she had just crossed about 10 minutes before.

Her disappointment over her race time disappeared.

"I just feel so grateful I wasn't going over the finish line when it happened. I just feel like I dodged a bullet," said Delong, 36. "It made me so grateful to be able to finish and be alive."

Delong, who finished in just under four hours, estimated she was about a block from the finish line when she heard the two explosions, just seconds apart.

"It was a loud, deep sound," she said. "At that point, everyone just froze, and we said, 'Whoa. What was that?'

"I haven't heard a lot of explosions, but I knew it wasn't fireworks."

'BLOOD EVERYWHERE'

Brandon Robinson, a Minneapolis native who lives in Boston, was watching the race at the Mandarin Oriental hotel near the finish line.

He said he thought the first blast was a firecracker or something set off in celebration.

"Then we heard the second explosion and saw people screaming and running," he said. "There was blood everywhere."

Casey Radcliffe, 23, a runner from Minneapolis, also had just finished when she heard the explosion just behind her.

"It was like what a car bomb looks like in a movie," Radcliffe said.

She and fellow runners reacted to the first explosion with "dumbstruck confusion.

Monique Delong of St. Louis Park shows off her medal after finishing Grandma's Marathon with a time of 3:38:40 in Duluth on June 16, 2012. (Photo courtesy of MarathonFOTO.com)

" The second triggered "scared confusion."

"Everyone around me was just kind of asking questions and trying to get away from it," Radcliffe said.

Delong said she turned to a friend and fellow runner, and, "I said, 'Mary, that was a bomb.' "

"It was a really long boom," said husband Rob Delong, who was waiting near the finish. "It shook the ground."

He said the usual din at the finish line suddenly fell silent.

"All the cheering stopped. All the announcing stopped. All the music stopped," Rob Delong said. "I think everybody was just shocked."

Robinson said he felt safe at the hotel where he had been watching the race and didn't want to leave. But the building was evacuated.

Robinson sprinted the four blocks to his apartment, where his sister Meghan Robinson was waiting for him; she had been on her way down Boylston Street to meet him at the hotel when the bombs went off, he said. He and his sister left the city to stay with friends.

Delong eventually met up with her husband and parents, and they drove to their hotel about nine miles from the center of downtown Boston.

The night of the marathon, racers typically crowd into bars and restaurants to celebrate.

"This kind of puts a somberness attached to the event," Monique Delong said.

"You don't expect this," said Cynthia Sabas of Robbinsdale, who was near the finish line with her 4-year-old granddaughter, Abigail, to watch her son and Abigail's father, Kris Sabas, finish the race.

"Boston is such a wonderful town; the people are so wonderful," she said. "There's such a feeling amongst runners, and then something like this happens."

'IN DISBELIEF AND HEARTSICK'

DeVries said that instead of the typical post-race celebrations by runners, a pall has fallen over Boston. She said the city's residents have offered to help her and apologized to her for what happened.

"Everyone is so nice," she said.

Kathryn Holum, 47, of St. Paul, who ran the race, said in an email: "It was a great day with perfect conditions, amazing volunteers, throngs of spectators and ever-organized race officials -- all marred by explosions at the finish that killed and injured unsuspecting and innocent people.

"Everyone in my group is safe, but we are in disbelief and heartsick over what has happened."

Heather Walseth of Inver Grove Heights who had finished her second Boston Marathon about 10 minutes before the explosions, said, "I don't know if it will ever be the same."

In the wake of the Boston bombings, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said there were "no known or credible threats" in the state.

Meanwhile, with the annual Twin Cities Marathon scheduled for October, race medical director Bill Roberts said that since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, organizers routinely plan how to handle bomb threats.

"I think a lot of major marathons do that," he said.

In Duluth, Grandma's Marathon organizers said say they will examine security for their race, which runs along the North Shore of Lake Superior.